How Playing Bane In The Dark Knight Rises Negatively Affected Tom Hardy

Comic book movies have become popular today for bringing larger than life characters to the big screen. However, it some cases there can be a price to pay for transforming one's self into somebody so over the top. Tom Hardy says that his body is damaged from playing the role of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Apparently, transforming his body quickly for the role took its toll on him. Hardy was recently asked how much of a transformation he would be going through in order to play Al Capone in the upcoming film, Fonzo. While the actor did imply he would be going through a change, he said his body was no longer capable of the same things it once was, thanks to what he'd done to it before.

I don't know if it's as drastic as Bane. I've probably damaged my body too much. I'm only little! If I keep putting on weight I'll collapse like a house of cards under too much pressure.

It's common for actors to have to go through some fairly extreme training in order to get their bodies right for a role. In the case of superhero movies, this usually means spending some serious time in the gym in order to have a physique that matches the character. Bane is a comic book character who traditionally has one of the most extreme bodies ever created and while Christopher Nolan's version of the world of The Dark Knight was realistic enough that Tom Hardy didn't have to go too crazy, it's not shocking if Hardy was pushed to create a body that was as large and muscled as he could realistically get.

While Tom Hardy tells The Daily Beast that the apparent damage to his body may only be minor, and he doesn't specify exactly what happened, it's not too surprising if he has some long term soreness or other aches and pains from pushing himself to build his body. It would seem that the issue here was the short time frame that the actor had to build his muscles. Normally, if you wanted to build your body to look like Bane, you can do that, but you should do it over an extended period of time. Doing so allows your body to get used to carrying that much muscle. Hardy seems to be implying that what has left him a little banged up is that his body had trouble dealing with his new body because he created it so quickly.

While one's body can recover from putting it through stress like that when you're younger, Tom Hardy points out that he's very nearly 40 years old and as such his doesn't recover nearly as quickly as it once did. Hopefully, whatever minor issues he's caused himself in the past don't lead to long-term problems going forward. We're certainly hoping we'll get to see a lot more of Tom Hardy in lots of different roles for years to come.